by Sir Hardly Anyone

So how come our youth players are doing so well as we have been suggesting of late?

It is an issue that has been touched upon of late, but there is another reason which seems to be relevant as shown by this rather exciteable headline in the Daily Mail…

“Manchester City have banked over £60m more than their top-six rivals through flogging academy players.”

In fact the subsequent article claims it is over £70m, so I wonder if the headline writer had just come back from the pub when he changed that to £60m.  Not like the Mail and that rather underisable anti-Arsenal blog it sponsors to underdo an commentary like that.

The full figure for meat sales they give is £70,672,876 from trading in young men and the Mail, always a newspaper in favour of treating people as saleable commodities reflect with gusto and enthusiasm that “Funds made by academy player sales dwarf figures achieved by rivals.” I suppose the banner headline could have been “Manchester City, retailers of young men” but maybe they are holding that back for next time.  Unless Man City asked them not to run that of course.   The Mail is always known to support repressive governments.

Elsewhere the “Daily cannon” is worried, as it runs the headline “Lee Bowyer had a lot of praise for Krystian Bielik after Charlton’s win over Barnsley on Saturday, but he also had rather worrying news on the injury front.”

Except that maybe that headline doesn’t do full justice to the reality.  Here is what follows the story…

“Bielik was coming back from a calf strain over the weekend, making his first start since the beginning of September. The Arsenal loanee made a return to his usual centre-back role, after playing defensive midfield in some of Charlton’s early games of the campaign.

“It doesn’t get much better for a centre-back than keeping a clean sheet, and that’s exactly what Bielik did in the 2-0 victory. However, he had to come off in the 82nd minute with cramp. Manager Bowyer gave his thoughts on the performance afterwards, as well as his assessment of the defender’s fitness.”

Oh my goodness.  Shock Horror!!!  Cramp!!!!!!!   After returning from an injury lay off !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s move on: “Manchester United star Alexis Sanchez offered Old Trafford exit; Arsenal lead race to land massive deal… ”

The increasingly excitable Bristol Live has this one.  There is no connection between the two stories however.  For as the paper says, “Arsenal are in ‘pole position’ to land highly-rated Roma winger Cengiz Under according to reports in Italy, via Sport Witness.”   Bristol of course is a well known stopping point for Manchester United supporters travelling from their spiritual home of Cornwall up to watch the game.

And just think of the headline if Mr Under joins Arsenal and the deal is confirmed.  Yes it is

UNDER DONE

As for the Arsenal news, try this one.  “Arsenal star Hector Bellerin makes claim to fans ahead of Leicester visit.”

Claim?   What claim might that be?   That there is a claim is claimed by the Star and by “Brief Report” who tend to copy such things and print them again.   And would you know it?  It turns out there is none.  Whoever heard of a national newspaper writing a headline with no connection with the following story?

ARSENAL star Hector Bellerin has called for the club to remain ‘realistic’ despite their impressive run of form under Unai Emery.

Wow!

And the manager what does he say?

“Usually I want to break my statistics, thinking wins, thinking of the best performance, and the next match is Leicester,” says Emery. “If we are thinking it’s easy, maybe that’s a weakness. Our weakness is if we look a lot behind us at the last matches.”

In short, our manager is quoting Bob Dylan although not exactly – Bob being associated with “Don’t look back”.

Ah well.  Time for an afternoon nap.